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Can Adobe get worse? Yes! Photoshop Elements Downloader hell

I head to Adobe.com to check out Photoshop Elements 8. They have a trial version so I give it a shot.

First, a browser window pops up asking you to log in to adobe.com. I complete that. Then it says it will download an Akamai Downloader.

The Akamai Downloader downloads and mounts the disk image. It asks me where to save, defaulting to my home directory of all places.

I choose Downloads. This is a Macintosh after all.

I run the Akamai Downloader, and it puts up a minimal window with just a title and a progress bar beneath it. Yes, this “Window” is 20 pixels tall.

Then the window flashes several times and it quits. Now I am sitting at the Finder, with no UI. No Adobe nor Akami apps are running.

I look in Activity Monitor and see this new process, “rsmac_3276” running. That is a very descriptive process name.

Next i bring Safari forward and now, in the same window I originally downloaded this Akamai Downloader from, is a progress bar with the download.

So apparently, this Akamai Downloader is a Safari Plugin.

The download finishes and it asks me if I want to open the disk image. I select yes, but the disk image is corrupted, so it won’t mount.

Awesome.

Meanwhile, I close the installer window in Safari and I notice this rsmac_4276 process is still running, still using cycles. About 0.3% cpu.

I force quit the process and it immediately launches again.

So awesome, now they have some daemon that won’t go away and is using cpu cycles for no reason. Maybe it is tracking my use of the trial and dialing home, I have not checked yet.

What an awful, awful experience. Should I have expected better?

Update:

I had to delete com.akamai.client.plist from ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ and reboot in order to get rid of this software.

Update 2:

I found a bunch of other daemons installed, like bresink’s for an older hardware monitor I had used two machines ago, a textwrangler agent when I tested that for someone, and three, yes three Google daemons for updating software and such.